Grand River Transit

[KevinL]

Here's a proposal: have two runs of shuttle buses available through the day. One runs from R+T Park station to the Hagey/Tompa roundabout; the other circles Ring Road, connecting the University station with a stop near Village 1. That should reduce the walk to the LRT while keeping buses off Columbia.

[chutten]

The day has finally come!

This is a live link to current GRT bus location information. Cached files are updated by the system on the order of every 30 seconds.  

http://www.regionofwaterloo.ca/en/region...ataset.asp

[MidTowner]

From the Record: Cambridge express attracting riders

Apparently the 200 between Fairview and Cambridge has about 2400 riders a day, versus 2140 for the 204.

It's too soon to tell, but I'm impressed that the 204 is doing so well so soon. Given that, I bet ten minute headways (like the 200) would attract some serious ridership.

A comment on that article wonders what the ridership on the 200 in Cambridge used to be, and I wonder the same: that would be the really useful thing to know, whether the rebranding and infrastructure enhancements have led to increased ridership.

GRT doesn't tend to publish ridership by line, does it?

[mpd618]

GRT doesn't tend to publish ridership by line, does it?

No, but they should. Let your regional councillor know you think so.

[MidTowner]

Sure. You do the same. You're right that they ought to. The only time I hear about ridership figures, it's curated by some writer or other at the Record.

[Viewfromthe42]

It's an old number, but I believe that a year or two ago, daily boardings on the Central Transit Corridor (the 200 and 7) within Cambridge totaled ~4,500, but I do not know what the split was between those two routes.

[Pheidippides]

Given that Ion is supposed to allow for "the redeployment of 19 buses and 50,000 service hours annually" where would you allocate those resources?

Go.

[Pheidippides]

GRT doesn't tend to publish ridership by line, does it?

No, but they should. Let your regional councillor know you think so.

You can also suggest it to Region of Waterloo's Open Data Portal:
http://www.regionofwaterloo.ca/en/region...taHome.asp


Via:
opendata@regionofwaterloo.ca

[Lens]

I wouldn't mind seeing a few routes shifted to make a Weber iexpress route





Or a Breslau Airport link

[TMKM94]

IMO the 7 detour should become the permanent route. Once ion is running there won't be a need for a bus to go down King ST. (Between Allan and Victoria) once the transit hub opens the bus could go down Victoria to King instead of turning at Joesph. IMO The detour is more convenient for many people (Cherry Park area, Strange St. Belmont Village MT.Hope St. Gruhn ST. area) there is the 8 but it's not as frequent and it doesn't go into Uptown. if you're going to Conestoga mall you have to transfer at University and King. 8 Fairview is more direct then 8 University but it doesn't go through Uptown either.

[zanate]

IMO the 7 detour should become the permanent route. Once ion is running there won't be a need for a bus to go down King ST. (Between Allan and Victoria) once the transit hub opens the bus could go down Victoria to King instead of turning at Joesph. IMO The detour is more convenient for many people (Cherry Park area, Strange St. Belmont Village MT.Hope St. Gruhn ST. area) there is the 8 but it's not as frequent and it doesn't go into Uptown. if you're going to Conestoga mall you have to transfer at University and King. 8 Fairview is more direct then 8 University but it doesn't go through Uptown either.

I think the underlying sentiment here (and on related posts about the 200 detour on Weber) is that there should be better transit service on streets parallel to ION. It's a good idea whose time will have to come eventually.

Can't say I like the practical implications of removing 7 from King St., though. There's a heavy reliance on local service along King, and there are a lot of destinations in between ION stops to generate ridership as well as the way that 7 provides access to King St. N (Waterloo) and King St. E (Kitchener) areas unserved by LRT. Whereas in contrast there's just not much along Park.

Maybe in time that changes? I'm keenly aware (having lived in the area) that there's a big gap in continuous "N/S" streets between Westmount and King. Perhaps a Caroline - Park - Belmont - Highland route could be viable.

[chutten]

Given that Ion is supposed to allow for "the redeployment of 19 buses and 50,000 service hours annually" where would you allocate those resources?

Go.

One bus each dedicated to personal shuttles for the top 19 posters on WRC's transit threads?

After that flippant response I was actually going to pull up some population density information and use that to provide a thoughtful answer... but finding population density information for the region seems next-to-impossible. I've found these maps that are coloured by planning district, but they aren't dated despite their methodology otherwise being decently spelled out. I'm guessing their 'current' data is from 2006.

Statscan only publishes based on electoral district. There might be raw data down to the postal code, but that'd require some serious analysis and GIS fiddling to change into something useful.

Decent analogs using the width and location of roads exist and are tempting... but one needs only to look a King St versus Fischer-Hallman to see how that could go completely wrong.

What would be nice is a map overlay using the regional property tax roll information and assumed occupancy/employment numbers as per the above linked report. Heat map that sucker, and we could have a winner.

So, for now, let me just allocate my 19 buses and 50 kilohours (running the numbers, looks like 8 hours per bus per day) to existing routes. Which ones? Let's go with the iXpress routes since the buses are already branded as such. There are currently (Monday, midday-ish, Winter schedule) the following bus allocations (according to the finally-released real-time vehicle position data )

Code:

200 19
201 6
202 6
203 2
204 6

(So that's where the 19 are coming from.)

We are only one bus short of doubling the frequency on every iXpress route. 15min down to 7.5 on 201,202,204. 30min down to 15 on 203 (30min? Wow, that's atrocious).

So my vote is for doing that.

[KevinL]

There will be a lot of restructuring come 2017 when Ion launches - in particular, the Country Hills - Ottawa area will see the launch of the 205 (Ottawa-Lackner to Sunrise) and two new Ion stations that are not conversions from the 200 (Block Line and Mill). Routes like the 3, 11, 22, 12, and 201 will need to be reworked into the new layout, and possibly new ones launched.

[MidTowner]

I wouldn't mind seeing a few routes shifted to make a Weber iexpress route

I second this. A rapid service on Weber could attract significant ridership, I think.

Edit: Lens' station placements also seem logical to me.

[tomh009]

I wouldn't mind seeing a few routes shifted to make a Weber iexpress route

I second this. A rapid service on Weber could attract significant ridership, I think.

Edit: Lens' station placements also seem logical to me.

Weber iExpress should be able to run fairly quickly, too: most of Weber (once you get south of Bridgeport) flows fairly well.